New Report Warns of Growing Race Gap In Employment

The Economic Policy Institute has issued what it rightly calls “grim 2010 projections” for the employment prospects of our nation’s racial minorities.

Here are some lowlights from the “downcast” forecast, along with some calculations by yours truly.

The overall unemployment rate is expected to peak at 10.7% in the third quarter of 2010. But for blacks, the projected rate is 17.2%. This is in part because minorities “began the recession in a recession,” with the black unemployment rate more than double the white unemployment rate–higher, in fact, than the current white rate.

In the third quarter of 2009, the white unemployment rate was at or below 9% in all but nine states. In the 18 states for which there are reliable data black unemployment rates were all double digit. By the projected 2010 peak, the black unemployment rate will be over 17% in 11 of these states and over 20% in five.

The race gap is writ large in the District of Columbia.

In the third quarter of 2009, the black unemployment rate was 11.9% higher than the white unemployment rate. This is larger than any of the reported state race gaps except South Carolina’s, which is a mere 0.1% higher.

By the 2010 peak, the white unemployment rate will have increased by 0.4% and the black unemployment rate by 1.3%–more than three times as much as the white rate.

The difference between the white and black rates will have grown to 12.8%–again greater than the difference in any state except South Carolina.

Yet the increase in the black unemployment rate since the recession set in will be just about at the median–another indicator that black unemployment in the District is a long-standing problem.

The EPI report is a call to action for a job creation strategy that targets states and populations with the severest employment problems. And, indeed, the race gaps it documents clearly show that we can’t count on a rising tide to lift all boats.

The administration and Congress are going to be under pressure to put as many people as possible back to work as soon as possible. But if they focus only on raw numbers, low-income minorities and their communities will again be left behind.

In December, the unemployment rate for adults over 25 without a high school diploma was more than three times greater than the rate for those with a bachelor’s degree or higher. For teens, the rate was 23.6% and for black teens an appalling 48.4%.

So there’s an urgent need to build education and training into job creation programs, including meaningful work-learning opportunities for low-income youth. And we need, at long last, to commit to resolving other problems underlying the employment race gap.

And what if we don’t? Well, according to EPI, the black child poverty rate will increase to more than 50%–more than half of all black children beginning life with two strikes against them. A recipe for millions more trapped on the bad side of the economic divide.

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Hi! I'm Kathryn Baer. This blog is one way I use my skills and experience to support policies that will reduce the hardships poor people suffer and the causes of poverty. You can find out more about me here .